Fourth Woman To Win Nobel Prize In Physics

fourth woman to win nobel prize physics 2020 andrea ghez

In 1903, Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in physics for research on spontaneous radiation as discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel in 1896.

It took 60 years, in 1963, for another woman to win the most coveted prize in physics. Maria Goeppert Mayer was awarded for discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure.

Another 55 years later, in 2018, Donna Strickland received the award for her 1985 discovery, chirped pulse amplification, a technique which is used to make cellphone screens.


Cut to 2020, we have another woman Nobel laureate in physics, her name Andrea Ghez, who has been awarded the top honor for the discovery of a supermassive black hole in the Milky Way's center!

She shared the prize with colleague Reinhard Genzel. The other half of it went to Sir Roger Penrose.

When asked to comment on it, Andrea said: "I'm grateful, I'm thrilled. You know I work for the science and I'm just glad that it is recognized."



One might ask, "Why do we care about supermassive black holes, like, why is that so important to know about?

Andrea says: "They represent the breakdown of our understanding of the laws of physics. It's transformed our knowledge of these objects that we didn't really have proof existed in the universe."

By picturing the center of Milky Way galaxy at infrared wavelength, Ghez and her team were able to peer through heavy dust that blocked visible light, and produced images of the Black Hole, Sagittarius A*.

By using Kepler's third law, she showed that its mass was 4.1 million solar masses. Based on its mass and radius calculations, astronomers concluded that Sagittarius A* was a supermassive black hole.


Andrea has appeared on many black hole physics documentaries for BBC and Discovery Channel. When asked about her role as a science comunicator, she replied: "We all must step up to talk about the role of science and that is, I think, more important than ever."

She stayed up many nights at the Keck telescope photographing the center of Milky Way and then superimposed each still photograph on top of the other to make a film showing how stars around the center behaved due to Sag A*. In 2020, we celebrate her brilliance and dedication.

Roger Penrose Wins Nobel Prize In Physics

sir roger penrose nobel prize 2020 black hole relativity

American theoretical physicist, Richard Feynman, had once said: "Mathematicians are only dealing with the structure of the reasoning and they do not really care about what they're talking. The physicist, on the other hand, has meaning to all the phrases."


Sir Roger Penrose agrees.


In his 1997 book, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Penrose wrote: "Well, why am I talking about things when I do not know what they really mean? It is probably because I am a mathematician and mathematicians do not mind so much about this, so long as those things can say something about the connections between them."



Cut to 2020, Penrose is the winner of Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity. He shares it with Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez.


"I was good at maths, yes, but I didn't necessarily do very well in my tests. But the teacher realized if he gave me enough time, I would do well," the laureate recalled.


While he had been working proactively to unravel the mysteries of the universe since the 50s, Roger Penrose came to a much wider public attention after publishing of A Brief History of Time in 1988.



Penrose and Hawking go way back. They both were the winners of Wolf Prize in 1988 for Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems (1965). Their friendship and collaboration were captured even in the movies: Hawking (2004) and Theory of Everything (2014).


See also: Best Physics Movies


Sir Penrose was most heavily inspired by his father, Lionel Penrose, who was a psychiatrist and a geneticist. In fact, brilliance runs down their family: his grandfather was a renowned Irish artist, one of his brothers is a physicist himself and the other is a Chess grandmaster, his sister, a geneticist, has followed in her father's footsteps!


Since Penrose was purely a mathematician, his work was really abstract in that sense. But he was drawn to astrophysics by Dennis Sciama (who also was a doctoral advisor to Stephen Hawking).


And that is how they first met.


sir roger penrose nobel prize 2020 black hole relativity

They proposed two types of singularities: space-like for non-rotating black holes and time-like for rotating black holes.


It was thought that in the eventual collapse of a star (to form a black hole), if the star is spinning and so possesses even some angular momentum, maybe the centrifugal force could counteract gravity and keep the singularity from forming.


Penrose-Hawking theorems showed that that cannot happen, and that a singularity will always form once an event horizon forms. In other words, Penrose proved with complicated maths that Black holes were not impossible and in fact a result of relativity.


Hence, in 2020, we celebrate Sir Roger Penrose's contributions to physics, his incredible writings on human consciousness and his life in general.

Albert Einstein on Gandhi, Non-Violence and India

albert einstein on gandhi jayanti

Generations to come, will scarce believe, that such a man as this one, ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth. This was said of Mahatma Gandhi by Albert Einstein on the former's 70th birthday in 1939.



Einstein was deeply inspired by Gandhi's teachings and so much so that he called him the most enlightened of all the politicians of his time. The two never met but they exchanged letters among themselves. In other words, they were pen pals.


In 1950, two years after Gandhi's death, Einstein recorded an interview for United Nations from his study at Princeton University in New Jersey.


He said, "We should strive to do things in his spirit...Not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in what we believe is evil."


gandhi jayanti 2020 albert einstein study room princeton
Gandhi's picture framed in Einstein's study

On that radio interview, Einstein advocated for non-cooperation, a peaceful form of protest against what you believe is evil. Such a movement was launched by Gandhi in 1920s.


Einstein believed that if the world were to be improved, it could not be done simply with new scientific discoveries, it also had to encompass morals and ideals.


"In this respect I feel," Einstein said: "That the Churches have much guilt. She has always allied herself with those who rule, who have political power, and more often than not, at the expense of peace and humanity as a whole."


Einstein noted that the admiration for Mahatma Gandhi in all countries of the world rests on recognition of the fact that in time of utter moral decadence, Gandhi was perhaps the only statesman to stand for a higher level of human relationship in political sphere.



Their communication began through letters. Einstein wrote the following congratulatory letter to Gandhi in the 1930s (this was after their renowned Salt March from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi).


gandhi jayanti einstein letter to gandhi 1931 dandi march

Translation:


"I use the presence of your friend in our home to send you these lines. You have shown through your works, that it is possible to succeed without violence even with those who have not discarded the method of violence.


We may hope that your example will spread beyond the borders of your country, and will help to establish an international authority, respected by all, that will take decisions and replace war conflicts.


P.S. I hope that I will be able to meet you face to face some day."


Gandhi responded, saying: "Dear friend, I was delighted to have your beautiful letter sent through Sundaram. It is a great consolation to me that the work I am doing finds favour in your sight. I do indeed wish that we could meet face to face and that too in India at my Ashram."


Despite their intentions, the two greats never met in person.


On Gandhi's death, Einstein wrote: He died as the victim of his own principles, because in time of disorder and general irritation in his country, he refused armed protection for himself.

5 Physicists Who Were Musically Gifted


Even though physics and music are two wildly separate fields...what is life without both of them? Without physics, there is no chemistry or biology, or that which we call living. Whereas, without music, the living cannot so eloquently express feelings such as joy, heartbreak, hope and so on.



Richard Feynman


This was a man full of life...He was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize for his contributions to quantum electrodynamics. Even at old age, Feynman did not stop performing his famous "orange juice" song.



Albert Einstein


He had once said: "Life without playing music is inconceivable for me. I live my daydreams in music, I see my life in terms of music. If I were not a physicist I would probably be a musician. I get most joy in life out of my violin."


albert einstein violin player

His mother, Pauline, played the piano reasonably well and she wanted her son to learn the violin, not only to make him fall in love with music but also to help him assimilate into German culture.


Max Planck


He was a German physicist who is known for proposing Quantum theory in 1901. Planck was a father figure to Einstein yet they both played music as if members of a western classical band.


max planck piano music physics

Planck was gifted when it came to music. He took singing lessons and played organ, piano and cello, and composed his own songs. However, instead of music, Planck chose physics for a career.

S.N. Bose

He was an Indian physicist and polymath who is known for having collaborated with Albert Einstein on his original work which came to be called Bose-Einstein statistics.

satyendra nath bose music esraj

Satyendra Nath Bose was gifted at playing Esraj, an Indian stringed instrument, similar to violin. He used to perform for his students and colleagues in Calcutta and Dhaka universities.

Werner Heisenberg

He was a German physicist known for uncertainty principle, one of the cornerstones of quantum mechanics. Heisenberg was highly interested in music and played together with Albert Einstein if Max Planck called it off.

werner heisenberg piano

He started reading sheet music at the age of four! However, as Heisenberg grew older, his love for science outgrew his passion for music, despite which, music remained a lifelong hobby of his.

When A Teacher Learned From His Student

teacher's day india 2020 ramanujan hardy friendship

This is a special post about the relationship between a renowned student-and-teacher duo. They are Srinivasa Ramanujan and G.H. Hardy respectively, two of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century.

The lesson to learn here is that students are more "bindaas" meaning that they find hope when there's none...They discover joy even in the darkest of moments. Teachers, on the other hand, or adults beaten down by life's hardships, take themselves and life much too seriously.


Professor Hardy went to see Srinivasa Ramanujan in the hospital, who was terminally ill due to prolonged tuberculosis. Since they were both mathematicians, they always used to quip about numbers and letters.

Hardy, depressed over the fact that his dear student was going to die soon, remarked, that the taxi he had ridden in had a rather dull and ominous number... or so he felt.

"No sir!" A weak Ramanujan, replied after a brief pause. "It is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."

After pondering, Hardy couldn't help but smile. Hardy was the one to recognize Ramanujan's genius, and brought him to Cambridge University. Even now in his deathbed Hardy's favorite student managed to save the day.

The number happened to be 1729 which can be written in the following two ways:

1729 = 1³ + 12³

1729 = 9³ + 10³


Such numbers are called Hardy-Ramanujan numbers in the honor of their relationship. They are more commonly called taxicab numbers in pure mathematics.

There is a scene in the film, The Man Who Knew Infinity in which Dev Patel, who plays Ramanujan says, "I owe you so much." Professor Hardy, played by Jeremy Irons, looks him in the eye. "No, it is I who owes you!"

5 Poems Written By Famous Physicists

poems written by famous physicists poetry physics

Although they mostly employ mathematical language in order to describe nature...but from time to time, physicists cave in to poetry. In this post, you will read some of the best poems written by the most renowned physicists in the world.


Robert Oppenheimer

He was an American theoretical physicist who contributed to our understanding of atoms, black holes and quantum tunneling. He wrote the following poem describing his memories of New Mexico.

It was evening when we came to the river
With a low moon over the desert
That we had lost in the mountains, forgotten.
What with the cold and the sweating
And the ranges barring the sky.

And when we found it again...
In the dry hills down by the river,
Half withered, we had
The hot winds against us.

There were two palms by the landing;
The yuccas were flowering; there was
a light on the far shore, and tamarisks.
We waited a long time, in silence.

Then we heard the oars creaking
And afterwards, I remember,
The boatman called us.
We did not look back at the mountains.

poems written by famous physicists poetry physics
Tamarisks

Oppenheimer's friend, British physicist Paul Dirac, who hated poetry, quipped, "In science, one tries to tell people, something that no one ever knew before, in such a way as to be understood by everyone. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite!"


Paul Dirac

Ironically, Dirac wrote the following poem; quite full of gloom!

Age is, of course, a fever chill
That every physicist must fear.
He's better dead than living still
When once he's past his 30th year.

poems written by famous physicists poetry physics

He was a Nobel Prize winning physicist and this poem, which is attributed to him, shows his dedication towards physics. Dirac was a complicated character; in fact, Einstein described him as an awful balance between genius and madness.



Albert Einstein

Einstein had a great reverence for Baruch Spinoza, who was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese origin, best-known for his conceptions of the self and the universe.

How much do I love that noble man,
More than I could tell with words!
I fear though he'll remain alone
With a holy halo of his own...

This poem was written by Einstein in 1920 in the honor of Spinoza. According to Spinoza, "What many people call God, few call the Laws of Physics."


Galileo Galilei

He was an Italian astronomer who is known to have broken the foundations of Aristotelian physics. Galileo discovered the law of inertia and made pioneering contributions to astronomy.

poems written by famous physicists poetry physics

He wrote the following appreciation poem for mathematics; a free verse.

Nature is written in this grand book
Which stands continually open
Before our eyes
But cannot be understood
Without first learning
To comprehend the language
In which it is written.

Without which
It is impossible..
To even understand a word
Without which
One is just wandering
In a dark labyrinth.

According to Galileo, this was a language whose words were composed with triangles, circles and other shapes. Clearly, his intention was to say, that without math, it is impossible to understand natural phenomena.


Richard Feynman

He was an American Nobel Prize winning physicist who contributed to our understanding of the interaction between light and matter.

Out of the cradle
Onto dry land
Here it is standing:
Atoms with consciousness;
Matter with curiosity.
Stands at the sea,
Wonders at wondering: I,
A universe of atoms
An atom in the universe.

In this poem, Feynman has demonstrated the great extent of his intellect and imagination. It shows the evolution of life from the oceans to land-walking creatures. It also shows that on an astronomical scale, his existence is meaningless; but on this scale, in which he's in, he himself is the universe!



James Maxwell

He was a Scottish physicist who unified the phenomena of electricity, magnetism and optics into one single framework. His work is considered equivalent to that of Einstein's.

The world may be utterly crazy
And life may be labour in vain;
But I'd rather be silly than lazy,
And would not quit life for its pain.

This poem was written by him in 1858 in a book titled, Segreto per esser felice, meaning, Secret to be happy. Maxwell was a great lover of Scottish poetry and wrote many of his own.

5 Talents of Richard Feynman Other Than Physics

talented richard feynman ofey rogers commission infinity physics bongo

Richard Feynman was one of the world’s greatest scientists who won a Nobel Prize for physics in 1965. But we recognize him more as an outstanding teacher, a story-teller and an everyday joker whose life, was a combination of his intelligence, curiosity and uncertainty.

Feynman had once said, "Everything is interesting once you go into it deeply enough." He used to enjoy every single aspect of life whatever it had to offer. In this post, therefore, let us look at the things Feynman excelled at, apart from physics of course.


Sketching

Did you know that Feynman was an outstanding pencil artist who used to sign off his paintings with a pseudonym: ofey. The following is a portrait of fellow physicist Hans Bethe, also a Nobel Prize winner, friend of his.

hans bethe talented richard feynman ofey rogers commission infinity physics bongo

Physicist Richard Feynman had started drawing more often towards the end of his scientific career.

talented richard feynman ofey rogers commission infinity physics bongo


Bongo Playing

Feynman not only used to play bongo but also wrote songs to accompany the music. One of his famous songs was called, "Orange Juice" which he penned for his love of it.


You can just look at his old wrinkly face and wonder how and why he had so much charm even at old age?

Cosplay

Now this is interesting...because how many physicists do you know that loved to dress up? Well, Feynman was clearly an exception.

talented richard feynman ofey rogers commission infinity physics bongo
As queen Elizabeth II (from anonymous source at Caltech)

talented richard feynman ofey rogers commission infinity physics bongo
From Caltech archive

Poetry

Did you know that Feynman wrote a long free-verse poem titled, an atom in the universe, in 1955? His command over scientific language was unmatched...which is demonstrated by how he described the whole universe in only a glass of wine:

"If we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms...

The glass is a distillation of the Earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe's age, and the evolution of stars...

What strange arrays of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation..



Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it!

If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts: physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on..remember that nature does not know it!

So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!"

Teaching

This is not a surprise...of course we know him as the great explainer, right? Even Bill Gates has said, "Feynman had this amazing knack for making physics clear and fun at the same time. He was the best teacher I never had."

talented richard feynman ofey rogers commission infinity physics bongo

The public made him an icon because he was not only a great scientist and clown but also a great human being and a guide to his students in time of trouble.


Investigator

He was invited to investigate the Challenger disaster and found out the problem that caused the accident was trivial. Feynman did not shy away from blaming NASA.

He demonstrated that the material used in the shuttle's O-rings became less resilient in cold weather by compressing a sample of the material in a clamp and immersing it in ice-cold water.

talented richard feynman ofey rogers commission infinity physics bongo

NASA ultimately admitted that the disaster was caused by the primary O-ring not properly sealing in unusually cold weather at Cape Canaveral.


Writing

Apart from writing physics books, Feynman had a knack for telling anecdotes. He wrote two autobiographical accounts, one of which, titled, 'What do you care what other people think?' was adapted into 1996 movie Infinity starring ‎Matthew Broderick and Patricia Arquette.


Summing up

He was a genius in truest sense of the word. According to Robert Oppenheimer, "Feynman was a second Dirac. Only this time human." Just to let you know, Oppenheimer and Dirac were Feynman's seniors. In fact, Paul Dirac was Feynman's hero growing up, and quite opposite of what Feynman was...Dirac hardly spoke a word or two.

This Is How Dirac Predicted Antimatter

how did paul dirac predict antimatter dirac sea quantum mechanics

For those who don't know anything about English theoretical physicist Paul Dirac: he has often been compared to one of the fathers of physics, Sir Isaac Newton. Both were genius mathematicians; socially awkward; they made their greatest breakthroughs in their twenties; both held the Lucasian chair of Mathematics at Cambridge University.

But some may consider Dirac an even greater scientist due to many reasons. While Newton, in his day, became much involved with pseudosciences such as alchemy; he even attempted to reconcile science with faith through his writings. Paul Dirac, on the other hand, an outspoken agnostic, remained true to scientific path, and went on to make many significant contributions to the theory of everything.

Furthermore, while Newton was considered arrogant, too full of himself, who often made use of his authority to dismiss others' opinions. Dirac, on the other hand, was a lean, meek, shy young fellow, who suffered agonies if forced into any kind of small talk. He coined the term Fermion after Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, despite him having worked on the equation which governed the behavior of Fermions.

So that was a little background information on the man that was Paul Dirac. Unfortunately, he never was popularized enough, in fact, hardly anyone knows anything about who he was or what he did in his scientific career. Even so, his work is of primary importance to electronics, especially how electrons flow in the transistor, devices which form the building blocks of any modern-day computer.

What's more: his biggest discovery, prediction of anti-particle, has inspired numerous science fiction writers to create a mirror world in their stories, the collision of which with the real world, would lead to a whole lot of catastrophic activity in the lives of their characters. This is based upon Dirac's work that when matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate one another.

In the early twentieth century, Dirac, who had just completed his engineering degree, was unemployed. But this made him choose math as a career and thank goodness he did so! Because, a great quantum revolution was ongoing and Dirac, who had merely remained an observer, was keen on becoming a part of it.

Everybody at that time was talking about a young Austrian physicist named Erwin Schrödinger. He just had formulated wave mechanics, that is, an equation which explained the behavior of electron inside an atom. The wave equation, so it was called, gave the probability of finding the electron at any given point inside the atom.

Dirac realized that Schrödinger's wave equation was inconsistent with special theory of relativity. In other words, even though the equation was enough to describe the electronic motion at low velocity, it was yet unable to do the same at speeds approaching that of light. Dirac took this challenge upon himself to find a solution for it.

Unlike other physicists, those who insisted that revelations in physics be firmly grounded on experimental data, (and rightly so) Dirac relied heavily on mathematical consistency instead. To him, if the equation he found had mathematical beauty, then he just assumed that he was going on the correct path. This just goes on to show that Paul Dirac was more of a mathematician rather than a staunch physicist.

After many years, in 1928, Dirac modified the Schrödinger's equation to make it agreeable with Einstein's special relativity. His groundbreaking equation also defined the concepts of spin and magnetic moment of electron. While developing his equation, Dirac realized that Einstein's famous energy-mass relation, E=mc², was only partially right. The correct formula, he claimed, should be E=±mc², the minus sign because one has to take the square root of E²=m²c^4, which was a subtle correction indeed.

But then, according to an axiom of physics, matter particles always tend to the state of lowest energy - for stability. Therefore, the negative sign in E=mc² would imply that all the electrons tumble down to infinitely large negative energy. That is, an electron in a positive energy state (bound or free) should be able to emit a photon and make a transition to a negative energy state. This process could continue forever giving off an infinite amount of light!

Clearly, that isn't the case in the actual, stable universe; real electrons do not behave in such a way. So it made Dirac think of a solution to the problem: he proposed a theoretical model called the Dirac Sea in which he imagined that all the negative energy states were already occupied, meaning, that an electron in positive state could not tumble down to negative energy (since according to Pauli's exclusion principle, no two electrons could share a single energy state).

If a particle of this negative energy sea is given sufficient energy it is possible for it to rise into a positive energy state. A resulting "hole" would be created in the negative energy sea. This hole should have the same mass as the original electron but behave like a positively-charged particle.


Dirac wrote in 1931, after being suggested by Oppenheimer, that this hole was an anti-electron; a re-combination with electron should annihilate both of them. Because, when the electron comes into contact with the hole it spontaneously fills the hole and consequently must release the excess energy that went in.

In 1932, while examining the composition of cosmic rays, high-energy particles that move through space at nearly the speed of light, American physicist Carl Anderson discovered the positron. He observed that a particular particle in the ray behaved out of the ordinary. The trajectory suggested that it had to be positively charged but at the same time 1/1,836 the mass of a proton, exactly that of an electron.

In his 1933 Nobel Prize lecture, Dirac suggested that particle-antiparticle should be a fundamental symmetry of nature. He interpreted the Dirac equation to mean that for every particle there existed a corresponding antiparticle, exactly matching the particle mass but with opposite charge. In 1955, antiproton was discovered by University of California, Berkeley physicists.

The success of Dirac equation shows that a mathematical result can manifest itself in the real world. Paul Dirac had once said, "If you are receptive and humble, mathematics will lead you by the hand." That is pretty much true; his work has been described fully on par with the works of Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein before him. Dirac was undoubtedly a genius.

10 Books Recommended By Famous Scientists

popular book recommendation by scientists favorite books by physicists

Renowned astronomer and former NASA advisor Carl Sagan had once famously said, "One glance at a book and you are inside the mind of another person; perhaps someone dead for thousand of years. To read, therefore, is to voyage through time."

Maybe this is why we read and why in moments of darkness we return to books; so to find out what we do not already know; and the more we learn the more places we can go! In this post, let us look at which specific books scientists like to gorge themselves on.



Neil deGrasse Tyson

He is an American astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium and host of Cosmos: a spacetime odyssey on National Geographic. In a Reddit ask-me-anything Tyson said one of his favorite books was The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.


He explained, "This book will help you learn our kinship with all other life on Earth. It is a seminal work of scientific literature considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology." Included in the book is evidence to support his theory which Darwin had collected on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s.


Michio Kaku

He is an American theoretical physicist, one of the founders of string field theory and science communicator. In an interview Kaku revealed his obsession with science fiction especially with Star Trek TV and books by Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.


He claimed, and perhaps, rightly so: "Science fiction helps to get young people interested in science. That is why I don't mind talking about science fiction. It has a real role to play: to seize the imagination."


Carl Sagan

As mentioned before, Carl was an American astronomer, former advisor to NASA and Pulitzer Prize winning author. One of his favorite books was The Republic written by ancient Greek philosopher Plato.


It has proven to be one of the world's most influential works of philosophy and political theory; both intellectually and historically. It is also the reason why Carl declared, in his disarming fashion, "Books break the shackles of Time!"


H.C. Verma

He is an Indian experimental physicist and a professor emeritus of the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur since 1994. His field of research is nuclear physics.

He has authored graduate, undergraduate and school level textbooks. When a student asked him which book was his go-to in his own early years, Professor Verma replied, "Fundamentals of physics" by Halliday / Resnick / Walker.


This 1000-page textbook was named the most outstanding introductory physics work of the 20th century by the American Physical Society.


Brian Cox

Brian Cox is an English particle physicist, author and professor at the University of Manchester. Professor Cox has been the author or co-author of over 950 scientific publications. When asked what brought him closer to science, he said: "Cosmos by Carl Sagan."


The book is an elaborate story of cosmic evolution, science and civilization. It spent a whopping 70 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List. The TV show of the same name was produced first by Sagan then by Tyson in 1980 and 2014 respectively.


Jim Al-Khalili

He is a British theoretical physicist, author and professor at the University of Surrey. Jim is also a regular host of various science documentaries for BBC.

He recommends Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman in his list of favorite science books. The book covers a variety of instances in Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman's life.


The name of the book derives from a woman's response at Princeton University when, after she asked the newly arrived Feynman if he wanted cream or lemon in his tea, he absentmindedly requested both.


Philip Ball

He is a British chemist and physicist who has been the editor of Nature journal for over twenty years. Ball has also written for Chemistry World and New Scientist.

His favorite books include Hawking's A Brief History of Time and Rovelli's The Order of Time even more so.


He says, "Carlo Rovelli has emerged as physics’ current poet, and for good reason: he has a light, humble touch, an elegant style, and a genuine regard for and understanding of art and philosophy."

His own most popular book Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another was winner of the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books.


Carlo Rovelli

He is an Italian theoretical physicist and best-selling author known for his pioneering work in loop quantum gravity. His most favorite science textbook is The Feynman Lectures on Physics.


Because of his books, Richard Feynman has often been called The Great Explainer by many fellow physicists. It is one of the most recommended books for physics undergraduates.


Brian Greene

He is an American theoretical physicist and mathematician whose work is in string theory. Greene is a professor at University of Columbia and founder of World Science Festival. He recommends The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.


Brian is grateful that such books have helped to fill the knowledge gap that many physicists share in biology. "In the book," he adds, "Dawkins lays out the case for natural selection at the level of genes." In 2017, The Royal Society listed The Selfish Gene as the most influential science book of all time.


Francis Close

He is a British particle physicist and Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford. His favorite popular science book is QED: The strange theory of light and matter. Frank says you are left with a profound recognition of the beauty of the universe.


The book has just enough quantum-mechanical mathematics to allow the solving of basic problems in quantum electrodynamics by an educated lay person.

According to Feynman, to learn quantum electrodynamics you have two choices: you can go through seven years of physics education or read this book.


Sources
© 2019-2022
made with by vedang